


The Monsters Look Like Angels, and The Angels Are Dressed as Monsters

by Kara_luna



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Childbirth, Gen, Happy Ending, Medusa deserved better so I gave her better, Mentions of Rape, medusa doesn't die, no sexual content other than the prior mention of sexual assault, perseus has a heart, rewrite of the tale of Medusa, spoiler; poseidon is the one who assaults medusa, the gods are horrible people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-28 21:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21398776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kara_luna/pseuds/Kara_luna
Summary: Medusa was a monster of legend, with hair turned to serpents and eyes that killed with just a glance. She was a creature hated by the world, with a story spread far and wide, transmitting across time as well as space for generations. But what if the tale we've been told lacked shades of gray and the character's fates were edited to suit the teller's own purposes. What if the truth was lost among the lies, and the monsters and angels were confused for one another. It's all about perspective, they say, but how can we decide which version we trust if we're only showed one.Or an alternative to a tale as old as time, in a world where the hero puts down his sword.
Relationships: Medusa & Perseus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	The Monsters Look Like Angels, and The Angels Are Dressed as Monsters

The world was bathed in the sun’s glow, glinting off Perseus's shield and dancing along his blade. Here stood a hero of legend, aided by the gods in his quest to slay the evil Gorgan and save his mother from marrying the monstrous king. He was the golden warrior of this tale, the man come to kill the beast and protect the world from her death bringing stare. He approached the cave where Medusa dwelled on the winged sandals of Hermes.   
  
His muscles pulled taut, ready to swing the sword in his grasp, ready to fight this beast to the death if necessary. As he cautiously moved forward towards the gaping blackness of the tunnel in the mountain face, eerie green stone staring him down menacingly, almost seeming like obsidian in the shadows.   
  
A hiss gave him pause, a movement in the darkness catching his attention. Then from the abyss, slithered snake after snake, writhing in the air in a fury to rip him to shreds. His eyes narrowed.   
  
The demon had emerged. She had come to face him.   
  
Weapon raised at the ready he moved forward, careful to avoid looking towards her face, and ready to achieve his destiny. He watched, waiting for a creature of hate and evil to crawl towards him over the rock and dirt. He waited for her to come at him with the bloodlust Athena herself had warned him of. He waited for the monster they had promised to him.   
  
But it never came. He saw something else as the shadows retreated.  
  
His guard lowered, just a bit before he realized his slip and rose it once again because- Because she was a monster. She was a _monster_.   
  
Wasn’t she?   
  
Doubt was creeping into his thoughts, corroding what he thought had been a noble purpose. Come here to rid the world of something vile and save his mother in the process, but this wasn’t what he’d expected to find.   
  
They’d raved and spat about the once woman who had allowed Poseidon to defile her, who had abandoned her goddess’ temple to live in solitude. This woman who had killed so many with the horrific punishment given to her for her crimes. Athena, the goddess of Justice and wisdom, had proclaimed her worthy of death.   
  
The stories of her wickedness had spread throughout the land, reaching the ears of women, children, men, and even gods. The collection of stone men that littered her island had been a favorite for storytellers as they passed from one town to the next. The world saw Medusa as a murderess abomination.   
  
But all he saw was a broken young girl.   
  
Shoulders slumped inwards, collapsing into herself like the weight of the world was crushing her. Head bent in shame and self-hatred, curled up in the corner of a lightless cave all alone. An entire island that only she lived on. So _alone_.   
  
And it was what he saw next that made him lose his grip on the sword the gods had entrusted to him. It’s what made him drop his shield.   
  
She wasn’t hiding from him for fear of losing her life, she was trying to protect her swollen stomach. Covering it with her arms and bringing her knees to her chest to shield it from view.   
  
She was pregnant.   
  
She was- she was _with child_. Bile climbed his throat and he choked on the horror of it because it was not possible for the gods to be unaware of her pregnancy when they sent him to slay her. They had known. The goddess of _justice_ had known. Artemis, the goddess of _motherhood_ knew. Poseidon the _father of the child_ knew.   
  
Have the gods no mercy?  
  
Have they no kindness?  
  
And for the first time, Perseus hesitated. And for the first time, Perseus reconsidered this woman’s tale. Raped by Poseidon before the shrine of her goddess and forced from service due to her lost purity, turned to a monster and left on an island to rot. He had thought her proud of what she’d done, arrogant and self-centered, but that was not the person before him.   
  
She was broken.   
  
Skin covered in gruff scales, darkened to an unappealing slate gray, hair that had been turned to a nest of serpents, and legs replaced by that of a goat. Her beauty stolen from her and replaced with features no one would ever love. Features no one would ever let her forget. And he wanted to scream. To scream to the gods, _why_ is this justice?!  
  
How is killing a mother and her unborn babe heroic?   
  
He looked to this young mother punished by the ones she once served, with a will so broken and beaten by the world that she could not even bring herself to protect her own life. So savaged by the world of men and immortals both that she bowed her head to the man sent here to kill her rather than look him in the eye and kill another.   
  
Because she may have been forced into the skin of a monster, but she still felt more guilt over taking life than the gods did.   
  
Men sent to murder her and yet she felt like a monster for defending herself, for using a curse she never wanted and had no control over. A priestess who had never lost her sense of right and wrong, no matter how unjust the world was to her.   
  
His teeth clenched, and he moved towards her once again. He felt something in his heartbreak when Medusa flinched at the sound of gravel under his sandals and dug her fingertips into her arms as if to tighten her hold on the child she believed she would never get to hold. Her hands clenched tighter as his approach did not stop or falter, as he continued towards her without preamble or a chance of escape.   
  
Her eyes tightened, as tight as she could make them, praying to the gods, any that would still hear her, begging them to keep her eyes from taking another victim. As soft flesh brushed her arm, she shuddered, a sob wrenched from her throat with the force of a woman who just wanted the torture to end. She didn’t care how, but the pain was just too much.   
  
Please, Artemis, the protector of mothers and keeper of fertility, let him come now. Let him come now before it’s too late.   
  
She had waited, month after month for this moment, and now it was happening under the threat of gold spun steel. The steady pain of the last few hours remained constant, but it was intensifying. She could feel something coming, something big inside her shifting and she wanted to cry in relief and joy.   
  
He was coming, and he had a chance at life.   
  
Pain erupted in her abdomen, gasping she clasped her stomach with both hands, choking over the waves of fire coursing along her veins. The feeling ebbed away before another, more powerful contraction, wracked her body and her scream ripped through the still air.   
  
They were coming. They, not him, a whisper told her. Because somehow she knew there was another child within her. A mother always knew.   
  
And gods how the pain was paralyzing and uncontrollable and incomprehensible.   
  
The feeling was all-consuming, blocking out every other thought and taking over her senses completely. Her ears heard no sound but the pounding of her heart and two others teetering on the edge of life and death. All she could see was the blackness that hovered under her eyelids, and all she could feel was the sensation of another being thrusting itself from her womb.   
  
If she had remembered the other occupant of her island, a young man who had lost his will to fight, perhaps she would have noticed his panicked eyes and uneven breathing as he watched a woman give life right before him.   
  
Hands that were clumsy from lack of natural grace and uncertainty brought her back to rest on the cave’s wall as she shrieked in agony. He ripped his tunic without care to mop up the sweat beading against her brow, however, he felt himself freeze as the serpents atop her head reared and snapped their venomous fangs at him.   
  
In the heat of the moment, Perseus had forgotten their deadly presence, yet now he hesitated, unsure how they would react to him. He expected them to leap towards him, to viciously rip open muscle and skin to pump his veins with their poison, yet once again, this woman before him defied his expectations.   
  
They hissed and stood on end and bared their incisors, but they did not attack. Because- he now understood- he hadn’t attacked first. They had no desire to kill or destroy for their own enjoyment, they did it only when necessary to protect their mistress. They were waiting for him to cut her open, to steal the life of her child. They were waiting for him to prove himself the same monster as the other men who had come for that reason.   
  
His eyes steeled in determination and without breaking eye contact with the largest of the snakes, he brought the cloth to the gorgon's brow and wiped the moisture from her skin, gentle despite the fact her scaled flesh was, itself, armor. The beasts that dwelled where the girl’s hair once did, drained of their fight as the exhaustion their mistress was feeling, seeped into them. They laid down along the nearby rocks and bunched on her shoulders to rest, dutifully watching him for signs of deceit or aggression.   
  
It took hours, hours of horrible, gut-wrenching screams and blood leaking across the cave floor. But finally, finally, the crest of the first child’s head appeared between Medusa’s legs, both of which were soaked with sweat and blood, the fur matted and plastered to her skin. Another shriek followed by a bout of panting pulled Perseus's attention back to the mother, and without thinking of it, he gripped her hand tightly.   
  
He bit down on a hiss of pain as her grip tightened painfully, practically grinding the bones of his hand together. It was something he remembered his mother telling him about when he was born, that she had been in labor for two days before he finally arrived. A midwife, the one who had helped to deliver Danae herself, had held her hand throughout the long hours. She’d smiled sweetly, and told him it was her support, her hand wrapped around Danae’s, that made those agonizing hours bearable.   
  
“Catch him- you have to- _catch him_.” Her voice was grating and rough, as though she hadn’t drunk water in days. The words broke him from his revere and he moved towards her thighs, flinched back as she jerked in pain once again, but he quickly recovered the distance as the head pushed farther out of the womb.   
  
And with one final push, the child slid out from between his mother’s legs, falling into the man’s waiting arms. The babe was so small, so fragile looking, so breakable. He wailed, long and high, squirming a bit before settling into Perseus's arms. Big blue eyes stared up at him, a tuft of golden hair sitting atop his head. This- he realized- was what the Gorgan had looked like before her curse. High cheekbones, bronzed, glowing skin kissed by the sun, and hair that looked spun from the sun’s fire by Apollo himself.   
  
She must have truly been beautiful. And the gods had ruined her for it.   
  
He turned to pass the child to his mother, expecting her to be eager to hold her firstborn and possibly only child- and found her face turned from them with eyes clenched shut. And he felt his stomach drop at the painful reminder she could not look upon her child if she wished him to remain alive.   
  
“Your child…” The snakes seemed to notice the small bundle’s presence, rising from the rocks to meet the child of their mistress. They darted around the child’s small, fat hands as he grabbed for them, babbling joyfully at the serpents.   
  
“The first- _Another_\- There’s _another_!” Her voice was panicked and desperate as his eyes widen in disbelief.   
  
Twins.   
  
They were incredibly rare, and even rarer still were the ones who survived childbirth. In nearly every circumstance, the mother herself does not live. But there was no time to contemplate the consequences of having a second child when that child was coming. Urgently he positioned himself before her once again, waiting for another small head to appear from her womb.   
  
His breath caught in surprise and alarm as it was not a head that appeared, but a hoofed leg. She was birthing a foal, the thought was nonsensical. It was unthinkable. It was impossible, yet here she was doing it. How would the foal’s mother react to the realization her second child was not human, not even humanoid but a completely different creature entirely.   
  
Perseus may have been born a prince of Argo, but due to his grandfather’s paranoia and the oracle’s prophecy, he and his mother had been cast from the kingdom to the shores of another. They had become fishers and herders of cattle in their new home, taken in by a kind fisherman who taught Perseus to survive. It was this man who had also required Perseus to tend the cattle and assist the horses' in birthing, an experience he now found himself grateful for.   
  
Holding the first babe in the crook of his right arm, he used his left to grip the foal’s ankle and gently begin to pull. A horse left his mother by the legs, then the body, and last the head, the opposite of a human child, and required help in most instances. Being birthed by a humanoid being was already unthinkable, but doing so after she had already given life to another child…   
  
He shook the thoughts from his head as he focused on easing the last of the twins from the Gorgan. And with one more tug by him and push by her, the foal slid into the world and nestled into Perseus's left arm.   
  
Here the hero sat, on the floor of a dark, muddy cave with blood soaking into his pants and crusting on his sandals, without his shield and sword, watching the rising and falling of two children’s chests. And he couldn’t find it within himself to feel regret for the path he’d chosen. Because these two precious babes would live, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from their sweet faces.   
  
After all, he had experienced that day, he was numb to the shock of the foal shifting in his arms and spreading two small feathered wings out from his back. Him, Perseus knew, they were both him. He just knew. And they were beautiful to him, despite the birthing liquids that coated them, they were so very precious.   
  
But still the mother kept her eyes sealed and head turned away, hiding her face in the shadows. And he asked her to hold them, to meet her babes, her children. And she curled into herself once again, trying to hide among the rocks. No, she whispered, no I’ll hurt them. Please he begged, they need their mother. And tears spilled down her cheeks as she shook her head in despair, I can’t hurt them, not my babies.   
  
You won’t, he promised her.   
  
He held out the twins to her, and her serpents brushed past her cheeks in their excitement to see the young children. She swallowed hard, her eyes cracking open just the slightest bit, just enough to glimpse a flash of color. Her eyelids lifted fearfully, cautiously, but when her eyes took in the two bundles in the man’s muscular arms-   
  
They flew open.   
  
And the loveliest smile graced her lips. Perseus saw how her eyes lit up with a joy like nothing he’d ever seen, her face so full of love and gentleness as she gazed at her offsprings. Her expression never once faltered, even as it turned to the young foal in his arms, it’s little wings damp and useless, plastered to it’s back.   
  
Her eyes met his for just a moment and both the man and Gorgan tensed in apprehension. But his skin remained soft and bronzed, he remained human. Her eyes flashed to that of her children and the fear and hesitance left her, as she gently lifted them from his arms and settled them in the crooks of her neck and shoulders. Seeing her eyes for the very first time, Perseus believed he knew why men turned to stone with just a glance. Because sorrow like hers, reflected so clearly in her eyes, was something, not even the strongest warriors could bear the burden of.   
  
But when she had looked at him, at the twins, her eyes had held a joy, a warmth they had not held since before she had been cursed. And the love in her heart chased away the grief in her golden irises.   
  
Perseus smiled because the gods hadn’t won. They hadn’t destroyed her, they’d been close but they hadn’t broken her. Not when these children filled the gaps and mended the broken shards, fitting their hearts into hers with ease. The woman cursed with snakes for hair, goat legs, and cracked, scaled skin glowed with motherhood, was stunning despite everything the gods did to rob her of that beauty.   
  
He rested on the stones of Medusa's cave, watching a mother and her babes, tiredly. He knew the gods would punish him for this, would punish him and the Gorgon he had spared, perhaps even go after the children. But if that was the case, then he would continue to do what was right. They asked him to be a hero, and that's exactly what he intended to be.   
  
He would save his mother alone if he had to, he would storm the castle and rescue her from the king who wanted rid of him. But first, he would make his mother proud.   
  
Perhaps this wasn’t what his ending was meant to be like, but he would rather this beginning over any happily ever after. 

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly guys, I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I saw some post on pinterest and it had art of Medusa hiding in a cave from Perseus and being terrified of him and everything and under it was this whole conversation about how Medusa deserved better and was basically punished for her own rape or that Perseus killed her, stole her children (Pegasus and a giant), and then used her head as a weapon. I wrote this because Medusa's story makes me both pissed and very sad, so I gave her a (kind of) happy ending. Hope you guys enjoyed!


End file.
